Conor Friedersdorf: If you've said it on the phone, the government has it

NEW DIGS

The National Security Agency's "Utah Data Center is currently under construction and is expected to open in fall 2013. Our $1.5 billion, 1-million square-foot Bluffdale / Camp Williams facility will house a 100,000 square-foot mission-critical data center. The remaining 900,000 sf will be used for technical support and administrative space."

Source: NSA.gov1

What if the federal government could go into a giant database, listen to every phone call you've made and read every email or text message you've ever sent?

I'm starting to wonder if that's already happening.

Improbable as it sounds, former FBI agent Tim Clemente, a counterterrorism expert, raised eyebrows last week by saying on CNN that the government possesses such capability.

His comments were made during a conversation about the Boston bombing.

The media was abuzz that day about Tamerlan Tsarnaev's widow, Katherine Russell. Did she participate in the plot? Anonymous law enforcement officials had already told the Washington Post that they found "al-Qaida's Inspire magazine and other radical Islamist material on her computer." And she called her husband on the phone after the FBI identified him and his brother as suspects.

Wouldn't you be curious to hear what husband and wife said during that call? CNN's Erin Burnett wanted to know, but felt silly asking if it could be done.

"It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?" she asked Clemente.

His answer was unexpected.

"No, there is a way," he said. "We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out."

"So they can actually get that?" Burnett replied. "People are saying, 'Look, that is incredible.'"

"No, welcome to America," he said. "All of that stuff is being captured as we speak, whether we know it or like it or not."

CNN apparently grasped the gravity of that statement, because they set aside time in a subsequent segment to question Clemente and make certain of his meaning.

"The federal government, we have assets," he said. "Those assets allow us to gain information, intelligence on things that we can't use ordinarily in a criminal investigation, but are used for major terrorism investigations or counterintelligence investigations."

"And you're not talking about a voicemail, right?" CNN's Carol Costello said. "What are you talking about exactly?"

He left no room for doubt.

"I'm talking about all digital communications," Clemente said. "There's a way to look at all digital communications in the past. And I can't go into detail about how that's done or what's done. But I can tell you that no digital communication is secure. And so these communications will be found out. The conversation will be known."

The claim of a single former FBI agent with security clearances isn't gospel. But it's worth taking seriously. And what a claim he's making! He's saying that, although Americans might not know about it and wouldn't like it if we did, every phone call in the country is being captured by the federal government. As Glenn Greenwald noted, Clemente described "a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State." And although CNN hasn't brought anyone on to corroborate his claims, neither has anyone persuasively discredited them.

We're so accustomed to the government taking extraordinary steps in secret to fight terrorism that the notion that they're hoovering up the private communications of basically every American no longer sounds implausible. The Washington Post reported in 2010 that "collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls" and other communications every day.

I am as eager as the next American to prevent terrorist attacks. But the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.

Register opinion columnist Conor Friedersdorf also is a staff writer for the Atlantic.

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